Porkopolis

Editor's Note:

Blackwell's triptych featured here, 'Hog Series LXIX: Butcher's Shop I,' is a montage that creates a dream-world of playful symbols and images. The painting is one of Blackwell's 'Hog Series,' now totaling over 250 works and spanning over 17 years. In this series, Blackwell goes beyond the shared cultural memory of the pig rituals of the rural South and also draws on the universal memories of childhood tales.

"The Butcher's Shop" is a surreal blend of visual styles and subject matter. Real pigs, toy pigs, cooked pigs and storybook pigs are shown with explicit links again to the art of Velazquez, and even Blackwell himself, who stands at the left edge of the canvas. As Blackwell, also a hog anatomist and funeral director, would put it; "the story of the Three Little Pigs has been dissected to create many dimensions of the characters."